Nova Drift News

Hello Drifters,

This update focuses on achieving two main goals: Offering an even smoother experience on Steam Deck than we already do, and preparing the game for porting. While there are many optimization challenges associated with porting (the focus of the next update), I'm particularly excited to share the game experience with mobile and Switch players.



A few highlights from 1.1:

• Reworked the Settings menus: Each category section is now a tabbed page
  
• Fonts are crisper & more readable, especially at non-native / small resolutions
  
• Ensured all controller glyphs, tutorials, and messages are accurate, large, and clear for Steam Deck and future consoles and mobile devices
  
• Reworked unlock progression, improving the pacing for players of varying skill levels
  
• Support for virtual keyboard high score entry on Steam Deck
  
• Many bug fixes
  

Here's the full change log.


Now that I've had a fair bit of time to recover from launch and play with a few other projects, I'm feeling ready to start thinking about new content for Nova Drift again.

Last month, we previewed a few ideas for Nova Drift Weapon Mutations.

I've continued iterating on what Weapon Mutations could be, and have arrived at a experimental concept for each existing weapon. The challenge is balancing unique weapon identity with the difficulty of tuning effectively twice as many weapons as the base game has. It still sounds insane to me, but... I'll figure something out?

Here are a few more experimental concepts:

• Blaster Mutation: Kinetic Blast
  • Kinetic Blast is an innately-charging, hard-hitting, close-range weapon that fires a pair of focused blasts ahead of you. These blasts can launch enemies
    
  • Kinetic Blast automatically charges up while you move, gaining charge from your speed. While equipped, mobility reductions don't affect you
    
  • Kinetic Blast fires either manually or triggers when you collide head-on. In the latter case, its damage is also scaled by your crash damage modifiers
    
  • Targets launched by Kinetic Blast can collide with other targets, dealing additional blast damage to each-other on impact, based on their respective hull strength and velocities
    

• Grenade Mutation: Sticky Bomb
  • Instead of exploding on impact or proximity, Sticky Bombs attach to enemies and explode after a short fuse, triggering all other nearby Sticky Bombs
    
  • Stacking additional Sticky Bombs on a target that already has some increases the fuses of the other attached Sticky Bombs
    
  • Sticky Bombs triggered by other Sticky Bombs increase their damage and blast radius for each reaction in the chain
    
  • Compared to Grenades, Sticky Bombs have a greater rate of fire, and deal more damage, but produce no cluster explosives
    

• Dart Mutation: Harpoon
  • Instead of dealing splash damage or burn damage to targets they're lodged in, Harpoons deal burn damage via a searing hot tether strung between them and their shooter
    
  • Compared to Darts, Harpoons deal much more impact damage, last longer, and have a much slower rate of fire
    

• Swords Mutation: Greatsword
  • Instead of deploying a pair of Swords, you deploy a massive Greatsword
    
  • Compared to Swords, Greatsword is slower, larger, much more powerful, and indestructible, but cannot create Spark Projectiles
    
  • Greatsword deals more damage the more missing hull you have
    
  • Wielding a Greatsword provides a small amount of armor and damage reduction
    
  • 
    

I'm sure these ideas will change and evolve as I experiment with them. My current estimation is that Weapon Mutations will appear in Nova Drift's first DLC, which may ship alongside all new Gear.


A few years ago, I received this amazing piece of fan art, and I never got it out of my head:

Shield Gear: Chakram, by Arch_Imedes

If there's time, I'd love to introduce something like this to the game. Since there is considerably more Weapon and Body Gear options in the game than there are Shield Gear, maybe this DLC could include a small Shield Pack to even it out.

[h2]Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me![/h2]
On BlueSky (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok


We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

[h2]Want to help Nova Drift grow?[/h2]
Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

[h2]Thank You[/h2]
To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos!

Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Balatro is obviously one of the best games from 2024, and now the dev behind it has shared what they think are the top titles from last year.

Read more

[h2]Nova Drift's Free Demo Is Now Available![/h2]
If you're one of the many people who have wishlisted Nova Drift, but haven't pulled the trigger, the demo is HERE. Tell your friends. They must know the exaltation of biomechanical wings cutting graceful arcs through luminiferous aether. You can show them.

The Demo Version allows you to reach wave 60, and rank your account up to 15. We even snuck in some Super Mods so players can learn how they work earlier than you'd normally access them.

Check it, here.

[h2]Porting Prep[/h2]
Even though we've been pretty quiet, we've been busy:

[h3]Steam Deck Verification[/h3]
Nova Drift is already perfectly playable on Steam Deck, but it isn't listed as "Verified" for a few trivial reasons, which we're solving. Getting verified means players can easily find it while shopping on their Steam Deck.

[h3]Switch & Mobile Needs: GUI Improvements[/h3]
We've started working on the many obstacles in the way of smooth console and mobile porting. Devices with small screens or low resolutions would benefit from larger and crisper text.

The first order of business has been using tabs on menus so we have the screen real estate to increase text size, or to add any new features we want.



For readability on small screens, we've improved text rendering, which will benefit all versions of the game. No more jaggy pixels!



[h3]Optimizations[/h3]
The hardest part of porting is getting the game to run smoothly on low-end devices. Namely, Nintendo Switch and phones. Computers are beasts compared to those. For better and for worse, Nova Drift is a game that won't try to stop you from filling the screen with projectiles if that's how you want to play, so we have a lot of work to do on optimizations for projectiles and collision detection.

To stress test, I asked players to create the most degenerate builds they could in terms of performance, they said "challenge accepted", and it was so much worse than I ever could have imagined. 50,000 Torrent projectiles on screen at once, easily.

The two worst offenders were builds aptly named "Lag Mines" and "Lag Ceptors", which maximize Torrent projectiles using mines or interceptors. And they only take around 22 mods to assemble.



"Lag Mines is unrivaled in fps krangling powers if you save up all 18 mines, but Lag Ceptors provides a constant stream of lag instead of a single burst. Though, the funny thing is you could totally build both of these at once."

Obviously, we can't solve this only through optimization, but I doubt that from a gameplay perspective, 50,000 projectiles is truly more meaningful than a thousand, assuming the damage expected is being done. We'll look into dynamically controlling the number of objects on screen, trading quantity for power when needed, among other things.

[h2]New Content For Nova Drift?[/h2]
Most players and our team seem to agree that the most valuable addition to the game would be a Daily Challenge mode, which we discussed in our previous post. Today I will talk about by far the most popular feature request, Gear Mutations, which are also on the table for a potential future update.

[h3]Gear Mutations[/h3]
So the idea is that around the level 20 mark, you're offered a chance to "mutate" a weapon, body, or shield gear in a way that changes its fundamental behavior. While they can be very strong, they're more side-grades than direct upgrades to existing gear behaviors. We'd probably start with 1 mutation for each weapon for the first update. I can see a few ways it could be handled...

Gear Mutations could completely replace weapons:

[h3]Vortex Mutation: Orb[/h3]

• Create and release a massive orb. The orb is slow-moving, decelerates, and deals burn damage to enemies it passes through.
  
• Only one orb can exist at a time. While an orb exists, firing creates a torrent of twisting, damaging submunition projectiles that erratically home in on the orb.
  
• Submunitions that make contact with the orb are consumed by it, increasing its size. The orb also consumes any targets it destroys.
  
• The orb detonates after a short time after it stops consuming, dealing blast damage in a radius proportional to its size.
  
• Modifiers to projectile count instead apply to submunitions.
  

Or it could instead modify existing weapon behaviors:

[h3]Pulse Mutation: Pulsewave[/h3]

• Pulsewave fires a single, intangible projectile instead of a cone of projectiles.
  
• Your pulses now originate from the projectile instead of from you, with 50% reduced damage and size.
  
• During the projectile's lifetime, it creates 7-10 pulses in random positions around it, each with randomized size and damage.
  
• Modifiers to projectile size affect the number of pulses.
  

Years ago, when Thermal Lance was added to the game, Weapon Mutations were pitched like this:



I'd also interested in creating a particularly special mutation for the Blaster weapon, rewarding players for never swapping off of it. You know, kind of a Magikarp situation.

We'll see where we're at after porting is well underway!

[h2]Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me![/h2]
On BlueSky (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok



We've got quite an active Discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

[h2]Want to help Nova Drift grow?[/h2]
Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

[h2]Thank You[/h2]
To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos!

Jeffrey (Chimeric)

[h2]DRIFT AND DRAFT Bundle[/h2]
I'm excited to announce the Nova Drift + Slay The Spire bundle is now available on Steam! You can get both, or you can complete the set, with a 10% Discount.



Slay the Spire is one of those games that left a permanent mark on the game industry, and I think I speak for a lot of devs when I say that playing it changed the way that I design forever. There's a reason it's still going strong 7 years after release, and why it's so hard to exceed despite countless iterations on the formula. It gets a huge endorsement from me.

More importantly, Snecko says BUY NOW @_@
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45418/Nova_Drift__Slay_The_Spire/

[h2]NOVA DRIFT + BROTATO Bundle[/h2]

We're also bundled up with Brotato like somekinda incandescent potato wrap.



"Brotato is a top-down arena shooter roguelite where you play a potato wielding up to 6 weapons at a time to fight off hordes of aliens." I feel like I can't sell this game better than that tag line already does. Like Nova Drift, Brotato has a crazy amount of variety in its toolkit, including hundreds of items, upgrades, weapons, and characters to experiment with.

If you love Nova Drift, I think you'll love this, too:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45524/Nova_Drift__Brotato/

Thanks for reading. We've got some interesting things brewing, and I can't wait to share what's next for our team!

Farewell for now,
Jeffrey (Chimeric)